JH Ranch Resort

The Friends of French Creek are displaying a great deal of patience. We are not dealing with our own.

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By Jackson Southern,Fort Jones

Siskiyou Daily News, Yreka, CA

By Jackson Southern,Fort Jones

Posted Apr. 10, 2014 at 4:00 PM

By Jackson Southern,Fort Jones

Posted Apr. 10, 2014 at 4:00 PM

The Friends of French Creek are displaying a great deal of patience. We are not dealing with our own. The JH Resort is an outside nonprofit corporation from Alabama with global interests. They take a lot more than they give to the local community. They are self-contained requiring only the occasional outside labor or construction work. We don’t know who they really are but we are going to find out. What we do know is that they have money and with money comes a sense of privilege and entitlement. We would hope that this would create a conflict of interest between their “business interests” and the Christian concepts they profess to hold.

They got their foot in the door in 1979 by buying out a local owner and have been repeatedly out of compliance with their use permit since the beginning. Instead of correcting their violations they ask for more. Instead of being told to “Cease and Desist,” they petition the county for expansion, the age old shell game of misdirection. They push and they push but they don’t comply. They continue to buy land like it’s a done deal. They are like an invasive specie that is exploiting the natural resources and the beauty of our valley, our streams, swimming holes and our high mountain trails and lakes.

This is a development that the Scott Valley Plan was created to protect us from. The JH Resort is placing a terrible strain on our water resources. Expansion would be a disaster.

So we sound like a NIMBY (not in my back yard). Consider this. Our neighbors to the north in Snohomish County with that devastating mudslide and perhaps 100 dead.

The board of supervisors signed off on that sub-division despite a history of documented slides and geologists warning that it wasn’t stable. Who’s accountable?

In a few months lawyers and lawsuits will assemble, blame will be leveled and economic liability will be demanded.

The danger with the JH Resort, expanded or not, is fire. The forest service has already determined that the French Creek drainage is a high danger fire zone. Two hundred, eight hundred teenagers sneaking a smoke? What could possibly go wrong?